How an FMCG Brand Built a Perfect Store Strategy Using Wiser Solutions

By using Wiser Solutions’ crowd of smartphone-enabled mystery shoppers, a leading FMCG player in Australia uncovered what truly drove its sales performance in the grocery channel and how to optimize its perfect store strategy.

One of the leading FMCG conglomerates saw a significant variance in its sales performance, with market share at the store level being more than 20 points higher in their top vs. bottom performing stores.

They partnered with Wiser Solutions to analyze their brand and associated category at the shelf and gain insights into the key drivers of sales performance at the store level. Wiser’s crowd of shoppers was asked to take photos covering their entire category, and Wiser then extracted data from these images to understand the correlation between store performance and planogram KPIs.

Challenges

The effective use of physical space is fundamental to any retailer’s and manufacturer’s success and your share of shelf, position on the shelf, ranging, on-shelf availability, and shelf layout can significantly impact sales.

However, the lack of robust data at the store level collected in a consumer-centric way often prevents retailers and manufacturers from optimizing planograms and driving category growth. In order to identify key sales drivers and gain insights as to why stores were underperforming, the CPG company needed to be able to link granular KPIs collected at the store level with sales data.

Indeed, given their assortment was meant to be similar in all stores (as it was negotiated at the headquarter level with one of the main grocery supermarket chains), there was no clear view of what was driving the high variance in performance at the store level.

Solutions

The Wiser crowd visited grocery stores across Australia and based on the images captured in-store, Wiser built a detailed mapping of the in-store environment at the SKU level for their brands and all their competitors:

  • Ranging, on-shelf availability, and position on shelf of top-performing SKUs
  • Shelf layout, including brand blocking and aisle flow
  • Share of shelf at the total category level and by sub-category
  • Macro-space indicators such as the number of bays allocated to their categories

Results were compared between top and bottom performing stores to understand the impact of each KPI on sales.

PRODUCTS USED:

Based on Wiser's intelligence, the FMCG brand mobilized its field team to take corrective actions on the prioritized set of KPIs and implemented a recurring tracking of their prioritized perfect store KPIs.

Results

Wiser analytics highlighted that sales performance was highly impacted by macro-space elements, such as the number of bays allocated to sub-categories or the number of shelves on store fixtures.

These macro-space specificities led to different planogram execution at the store level, which meant that the CPG company didn’t consistently get its fair share of shelf across the retail network or that eye-level position wasn’t always achieved for their top-rotating SKUs.

This demonstrated the importance of tracking perfect store KPIs at the store level rather than based on standardized planogram images that might not reflect the real store environment. This was the first step in helping the manufacturer redefine their “perfect store strategy” to drive better shopper experiences and ultimately higher sales.

They mobilized their field team to take corrective actions on the prioritized set of KPIs and implemented a recurring tracking of their prioritized perfect store KPIs with Wiser. The CPG leader also leveraged these insights to have fact-based conversations on planogram optimization with their retail partner.

Implementing a perfect store strategy can lead to up to a 20 percent turnover increase and therefore significantly impacts market shares, according to Bain & Co.

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